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Unless you have any health issues or have kids that want to go to college. Then it goes the other way. Trust me, as an American who lives in France, Francois

Unless you have any health issues or have kids that want to go to college. Then it goes the other way. Trust me, as an American who lives in France, Francois wouldn't swap either.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
digitalengineer 13y ago
And so both get what they want. Both are used to 'their' way of living. More freedom would scare Francois because it also means less governement in health care, child-support, rent-support, 3 years of unemployment checks, etc etc.
- epi8 13y ago
  Can we stop saying things like "more freedom"? Freedom is really poorly defined even to an individual, and tends to lead to sentences like "they hate our freedom". You could very well argue that freedom means absolutely no laws, absolutely no government, no public sector, period. You could also very well argue that freedom means being able to be confident that you have access to medical care, education, and child-support regardless of who you are, or your income level. Freedom doesn't actually _mean_ anything anymore, it's just a political catch-phrase. Can I rephrase your post and say "less government support would scare Francois..."?
  - digitalengineer 13y ago
    Of course. I should have said freedom of choice. Francois has less choice. About a third of his wages (and 20% of everything he buys) is used for the different types of government support. In return, he has the welfare-state benefits.
    - vidarh 13y ago
      Still bad. I grew up in Norway. I moved to the UK at 25. Employment rights and social welfare in the UK is a joke compared to in Norway - the UK is "US light" in those respects. Yet I felt I had much more freedom of choice in Norway: Becoming truly destitute in Norway is pretty much only possible if you refuse to apply for government support. This, to me, meant I was free to make a lot of decisions without considering consequences that would put me at substantial risk in the UK, and much more so in the US. It is hard to describe the feeling. I've mentioned before, how I started my first company (an ISP) pretty much on a whim because we were dissatisfied with the available ISPs; we threw together a business plan, found an angel investor, found offices and moved into them (literally; three of us lived there for a while) in the span of a few months. During this time, not once did the potential consequences of failing enter my mind, for the simple reason that there'd pretty much not be any consequences: I'd be able to get government support if I needed it, and I'd "just" go back to my studies or find another job. Not really needing to worry about healthcare, or housing, or whether or not you might starve, are important forms of freedom to me. I'd take that over a few percent lower taxes any day, and I'd argue that I get more freedom of choice from those benefits than what few percent more disposable income could buy me in other ways. > About a third of his wages (and 20% of everything he buys) is used for the different types of government support. If Francois makes enough to pay 1/3 of his wages in income taxes, he's earning enough that he'd pay roughly 1/3 of his wages in taxes in many pats of the US too. Sure, if Francois went to live in Utah, he'd be better off, tax wise. If he were to go to California, on the other hand, the difference would be minimal. VAT makes up very little of the typical tax burden. I'm in the UK, and 20% VAT translates to about 4% of my gross wage, because most of my income does not go to products that are taxed at the 20% bracket (for starters, I pay tax with some of them; then I pay my mortgage, and so on; and food is zero-rated). Tax differences are not as great as people tend to think. My tax burden in Norway was about 1-2 percentage points higher than in the UK. A salary giving me the same purchasing power in Silicon Valley, would cut my tax bill by about the same as my added costs for healthcare insurance, and certainly wouldn't cover my increased transport costs... I did the maths for this to excruciating detail because we were considering moving to the US at one point. There may be specific income levels where the differences are more pronounced due to differences in tax policies, and certainly some countries / states are more or less expensive (as I learned the other day: stay clear of Belgium... )
    - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
      What you call "choice" is empty of meaning or significant because you leave out the very relevant context in which that "choice" may be exercised. For example, it's dishonest to say a person with $20,000 in savings has the "choice" to pay cash or take a mortgage for a $200,000. Such "choice" is not real or meaningful, because it can't really be exercised. Likewise, it's dishonest to suggest that "choice" in America is not correlated strongly to income and wealth. The lower one's income and means, the fewer real, meaningful choices one has about a great many things--including medical care, food, housing, and basically everything else humans need to subsist. I have lived in every income spectrum up through my current one--from severe poverty to relative affluence. One of the most important observations I've made is how little "freedom of choice" there is the further down the socioeconomic ladder one goes in this country. It's just an empty phrase most often spouted by people who have never known anything other than a life of upper-middle-class or better living.
      - digitalengineer 13y ago
        Well, we were discussing Bubba and François not homepess people. > ...by people who have never known anything other than a life of upper-middle-class or better living. Is it? I would not know what you're talking about as I grew up during the '80 recession and my family was on welfare. I am glad I was able to go to a university in part thanks to gouvernement student-aid in a not so expensive city.
        Iftheshoefits 13y ago
        Well, "most often" isn't "always", and that your family was on welfare doesn't mean anything with respect to the fact that you seem to not understand how empty the phrase "freedom of choice" is. The one has nothing to do with the other.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Freedom used to have a perfectly good definition: the absence of coercion. During the 20th century the word was co-opted by people, such as yourself, arguing that freedom should mean something else, such as "access to medical care, education, and child-support regardless of who you are, or your income level". Unless intended in a strong negative sense (that no-one can prevent anyone from procuring these services, which was by no means always the case), those freedoms can only be realised when someone else are ultimately coerced to provide them. Those services might well be worthwhile enough to warrant such coercion, but it's downright Orwellian to insist on the coercion being called 'freedom'.
    - epi8 13y ago
      "such as yourself" I take a fair amount of offense at this statement. I am stating that, given that the word "freedom" is commonly being used not as a word, but as a political catch-phrase with multiple, often contradicting meanings, I prefer to clarify the usage, either by substituting it with another word, or defining carefully what one means by "freedom". Far from attempting to redefine "freedom", I am attempting to _totally ban its usage goddamn it_, since, as you have pointed out, its definition has been co-opted to mean something entirely alien to its original meaning. Edit: To clarify, when I said ban, I was exaggerating. I am not supporting literally banning the word "freedom", nor sending anyone to the gulags. I simply would prefer if people were to choose other, more exact, less politically-charged words in the place of "freedom".
      - cwaniak2 13y ago
        hoho, here comes the communist mind control - let's ban words! What is next epi8? We will introduce gulags?
    - vidarh 13y ago
      This use of freedom is much older than the 20th century. Already from the middle of the 19th century, socialists and others were arguing that freedom is contingent on the means to exercise them, and so that there is no true absence of coercion unless resources are distributed in such a way as to give people actual choice, not just legal choice. I find it downright comical that you call this Orwellian, given that George Orwell was a lifetime socialist.
  - jmerton 13y ago
    Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has a formal definition of freedom: "The right to be left alone." This is a very frequently quoted phrase in USSC decisions. BTW: the right to privacy is considered by many to be half of this.
    - mturmon 13y ago
      You are off base here. I'm not aware of any SCOTUS definition of freedom. The phrase you quote is most associated with Louis Brandeis' conception of a right to privacy (it was his in-a-nutshell definition). Privacy and freedom are not the same, obviously. And, there is nothing explicitly in the Constitution (or the Amendments) about privacy per se, which is why Brandeis had to write the article grappling with the issue.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has a formal definition of freedom: "The right to be left alone." [citation needed]
    - jmerton 13y ago
      Me again. I committed a serious spelling error. The Actual phrase is the "right to be LET alone." This is actually quite explicit in the Fourth Amendment. Privacy was not "invented" by the Supremes. As far as citation, here is a list: http://law.justia.com/lawsearch?query=%22right%20to%20be%20let%20alone%22 http://law.justia.com/lawsearch?query=%22right%20to%20be%20l.... As I said, this is commonly quoted phrase. I stand by my original comment, with the change of one word.
- coldtea 13y ago
  "More freedom"? Oh, you mean "more dependence upon private and corporate interests". Or, "less democratic control over the services provided, instead left to whoever has money to influence the market to decide". [added] I'm kidding (only slightly), because I took offense of Francois liking "less freedom". How about he has a different concept of freedom? That could be either equally valid, or less valid, or even more valid. Basically, what you wrote, I understood as: "I don't believe in democratic governance and voting, for me the government is some kind of enemy I want to see less of, and more wallet-voting". Which if fine by me, but it should be stated more explicitly. Other people find wallet-voting mighty inneficient, and to me doesn't sound very different than "the rich get what they want".
- RivieraKid 13y ago
  Ironically, I would say that the French are more free than Americans.
- cylinder 13y ago
  "Freedom" to me is defined as being able to do what I want with my life. Should I choose to be an ambitious workaholic, I should be allowed and encouraged to do so. Should I choose to live a simple life, I should be permitted. How can I do that in the US when there's so much "overhead" to living here? $700/mo to insure a family of two mid-30s adults and their two small children with a high deductible? $30,000 per year for university for the kids? High property taxes based on the market value of my house even though I bought and paid for it decades ago? This is all ludicrous and does nothing more than enslave you to a life of endless work to cover your overhead. And I'm so free that my beloved Congressmen don't let me play a hand of poker online should I want to do so. Oh, yeah, freedom bonus: As a US citizen I'm forced to pay taxes on my worldwide income even if I no longer live in the US. And if I want to get rid of this beacon of freedom, my US citizenship, I have to pay an "exit tax" on my assets. Freedom my ass.
- ulfw 13y ago
  Freedom? A democracy with only two electable parties? The world's highest incarceration rate bar none. The world's highest military spending. Huge prevalence of guns. etc etc Listen, the US is a wonderful country for many many reasons. But we should get off the high horse of 'freedom'. Highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q49NOyJ8fNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q49NOyJ8fNA
jerf 13y ago
I'd observe that if that is literally true, if neither would trade for the other's economic position, the question of which is better off is undefined, for any definition of "better off" that properly takes the subjective nature of value into account. And that's not just a statistical sort of truth... it's actually profoundly true, something that touches deeply on the question of "affluence" and what wealth really is.
- arethuza 13y ago
  One small thing perhaps worth noting on the subjective side of things is that France has the most foreign visitors of any country, now of course this is offset by the fact that the US is relatively remote, but France as a country has a hell of a lot of things going for it even if it is a bit messed up economically.
- threatofrain 13y ago
  I'd say that the higher $ man who lives in the city in a compact space with a compact car is more well off than the man living in an inland state with lots of acres and a hunting cabin. Why? Because the man in the city can purchase that anytime he wants. Just like you can go take your money to China right now and teach English as a side thing. So that subjective value can still be wrapped around an objectively lookable thing; it's just that the city man is not indulging in that lifestyle yet -- or perhaps he wishes to take that wealth elsewhere.
noblethrasher 13y ago
Not that it matters any more, but Oklahoma has two good world-class universities (and many smaller ones), and, about 10 years ago, subsidized education to the tune of about 66%: full time tuition (12 hrs) and fees was about $1500/semester Even now, the junior college-to-university route is still pretty affordable. Things are somewhat bad now —and getting worse— but it's a relatively new condition.
- Raphael 13y ago
  The catch is that those students have to live in Oklahoma.
mar164 13y ago
Not true. In 2011, the ratio of French emigrants into the U.S. to Americans emigrants into France was ~1.7. Adjusting for population implies that the likelihood that a French person would emigrate to the U.S. is much larger than the likelihood that an American would move to France.
- ulfw 13y ago
  Yea and what's the ratio of French people speaking English vs Americans speaking anything but English (let alone French!)?

Unless you have any health issues or have kids that want to go to college. Then it goes the other way. Trust me, as an American who lives in France, Francois wouldn't swap either.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

digitalengineer 13y ago

And so both get what they want. Both are used to 'their' way of living. More freedom would scare Francois because it also means less governement in health care, child-support, rent-support, 3 years of unemployment checks, etc etc.

epi8 13y ago
Can we stop saying things like "more freedom"? Freedom is really poorly defined even to an individual, and tends to lead to sentences like "they hate our freedom". You could very well argue that freedom means absolutely no laws, absolutely no government, no public sector, period. You could also very well argue that freedom means being able to be confident that you have access to medical care, education, and child-support regardless of who you are, or your income level. Freedom doesn't actually _mean_ anything anymore, it's just a political catch-phrase. Can I rephrase your post and say "less government support would scare Francois..."?
- digitalengineer 13y ago
  Of course. I should have said freedom of choice. Francois has less choice. About a third of his wages (and 20% of everything he buys) is used for the different types of government support. In return, he has the welfare-state benefits.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Still bad. I grew up in Norway. I moved to the UK at 25. Employment rights and social welfare in the UK is a joke compared to in Norway - the UK is "US light" in those respects. Yet I felt I had much more freedom of choice in Norway: Becoming truly destitute in Norway is pretty much only possible if you refuse to apply for government support. This, to me, meant I was free to make a lot of decisions without considering consequences that would put me at substantial risk in the UK, and much more so in the US. It is hard to describe the feeling. I've mentioned before, how I started my first company (an ISP) pretty much on a whim because we were dissatisfied with the available ISPs; we threw together a business plan, found an angel investor, found offices and moved into them (literally; three of us lived there for a while) in the span of a few months. During this time, not once did the potential consequences of failing enter my mind, for the simple reason that there'd pretty much not be any consequences: I'd be able to get government support if I needed it, and I'd "just" go back to my studies or find another job. Not really needing to worry about healthcare, or housing, or whether or not you might starve, are important forms of freedom to me. I'd take that over a few percent lower taxes any day, and I'd argue that I get more freedom of choice from those benefits than what few percent more disposable income could buy me in other ways. > About a third of his wages (and 20% of everything he buys) is used for the different types of government support. If Francois makes enough to pay 1/3 of his wages in income taxes, he's earning enough that he'd pay roughly 1/3 of his wages in taxes in many pats of the US too. Sure, if Francois went to live in Utah, he'd be better off, tax wise. If he were to go to California, on the other hand, the difference would be minimal. VAT makes up very little of the typical tax burden. I'm in the UK, and 20% VAT translates to about 4% of my gross wage, because most of my income does not go to products that are taxed at the 20% bracket (for starters, I pay tax with some of them; then I pay my mortgage, and so on; and food is zero-rated). Tax differences are not as great as people tend to think. My tax burden in Norway was about 1-2 percentage points higher than in the UK. A salary giving me the same purchasing power in Silicon Valley, would cut my tax bill by about the same as my added costs for healthcare insurance, and certainly wouldn't cover my increased transport costs... I did the maths for this to excruciating detail because we were considering moving to the US at one point. There may be specific income levels where the differences are more pronounced due to differences in tax policies, and certainly some countries / states are more or less expensive (as I learned the other day: stay clear of Belgium... )
  - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
    What you call "choice" is empty of meaning or significant because you leave out the very relevant context in which that "choice" may be exercised. For example, it's dishonest to say a person with $20,000 in savings has the "choice" to pay cash or take a mortgage for a $200,000. Such "choice" is not real or meaningful, because it can't really be exercised. Likewise, it's dishonest to suggest that "choice" in America is not correlated strongly to income and wealth. The lower one's income and means, the fewer real, meaningful choices one has about a great many things--including medical care, food, housing, and basically everything else humans need to subsist. I have lived in every income spectrum up through my current one--from severe poverty to relative affluence. One of the most important observations I've made is how little "freedom of choice" there is the further down the socioeconomic ladder one goes in this country. It's just an empty phrase most often spouted by people who have never known anything other than a life of upper-middle-class or better living.
    - digitalengineer 13y ago
      Well, we were discussing Bubba and François not homepess people. > ...by people who have never known anything other than a life of upper-middle-class or better living. Is it? I would not know what you're talking about as I grew up during the '80 recession and my family was on welfare. I am glad I was able to go to a university in part thanks to gouvernement student-aid in a not so expensive city.
      - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
        Well, "most often" isn't "always", and that your family was on welfare doesn't mean anything with respect to the fact that you seem to not understand how empty the phrase "freedom of choice" is. The one has nothing to do with the other.
- mseebach 13y ago
  Freedom used to have a perfectly good definition: the absence of coercion. During the 20th century the word was co-opted by people, such as yourself, arguing that freedom should mean something else, such as "access to medical care, education, and child-support regardless of who you are, or your income level". Unless intended in a strong negative sense (that no-one can prevent anyone from procuring these services, which was by no means always the case), those freedoms can only be realised when someone else are ultimately coerced to provide them. Those services might well be worthwhile enough to warrant such coercion, but it's downright Orwellian to insist on the coercion being called 'freedom'.
  - epi8 13y ago
    "such as yourself" I take a fair amount of offense at this statement. I am stating that, given that the word "freedom" is commonly being used not as a word, but as a political catch-phrase with multiple, often contradicting meanings, I prefer to clarify the usage, either by substituting it with another word, or defining carefully what one means by "freedom". Far from attempting to redefine "freedom", I am attempting to _totally ban its usage goddamn it_, since, as you have pointed out, its definition has been co-opted to mean something entirely alien to its original meaning. Edit: To clarify, when I said ban, I was exaggerating. I am not supporting literally banning the word "freedom", nor sending anyone to the gulags. I simply would prefer if people were to choose other, more exact, less politically-charged words in the place of "freedom".
    - cwaniak2 13y ago
      hoho, here comes the communist mind control - let's ban words! What is next epi8? We will introduce gulags?
  - vidarh 13y ago
    This use of freedom is much older than the 20th century. Already from the middle of the 19th century, socialists and others were arguing that freedom is contingent on the means to exercise them, and so that there is no true absence of coercion unless resources are distributed in such a way as to give people actual choice, not just legal choice. I find it downright comical that you call this Orwellian, given that George Orwell was a lifetime socialist.
- jmerton 13y ago
  Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has a formal definition of freedom: "The right to be left alone." This is a very frequently quoted phrase in USSC decisions. BTW: the right to privacy is considered by many to be half of this.
  - mturmon 13y ago
    You are off base here. I'm not aware of any SCOTUS definition of freedom. The phrase you quote is most associated with Louis Brandeis' conception of a right to privacy (it was his in-a-nutshell definition). Privacy and freedom are not the same, obviously. And, there is nothing explicitly in the Constitution (or the Amendments) about privacy per se, which is why Brandeis had to write the article grappling with the issue.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has a formal definition of freedom: "The right to be left alone." [citation needed]
  - jmerton 13y ago
    Me again. I committed a serious spelling error. The Actual phrase is the "right to be LET alone." This is actually quite explicit in the Fourth Amendment. Privacy was not "invented" by the Supremes. As far as citation, here is a list: http://law.justia.com/lawsearch?query=%22right%20to%20be%20let%20alone%22 http://law.justia.com/lawsearch?query=%22right%20to%20be%20l.... As I said, this is commonly quoted phrase. I stand by my original comment, with the change of one word.
coldtea 13y ago
"More freedom"? Oh, you mean "more dependence upon private and corporate interests". Or, "less democratic control over the services provided, instead left to whoever has money to influence the market to decide". [added] I'm kidding (only slightly), because I took offense of Francois liking "less freedom". How about he has a different concept of freedom? That could be either equally valid, or less valid, or even more valid. Basically, what you wrote, I understood as: "I don't believe in democratic governance and voting, for me the government is some kind of enemy I want to see less of, and more wallet-voting". Which if fine by me, but it should be stated more explicitly. Other people find wallet-voting mighty inneficient, and to me doesn't sound very different than "the rich get what they want".
RivieraKid 13y ago
Ironically, I would say that the French are more free than Americans.
cylinder 13y ago
"Freedom" to me is defined as being able to do what I want with my life. Should I choose to be an ambitious workaholic, I should be allowed and encouraged to do so. Should I choose to live a simple life, I should be permitted. How can I do that in the US when there's so much "overhead" to living here? $700/mo to insure a family of two mid-30s adults and their two small children with a high deductible? $30,000 per year for university for the kids? High property taxes based on the market value of my house even though I bought and paid for it decades ago? This is all ludicrous and does nothing more than enslave you to a life of endless work to cover your overhead. And I'm so free that my beloved Congressmen don't let me play a hand of poker online should I want to do so. Oh, yeah, freedom bonus: As a US citizen I'm forced to pay taxes on my worldwide income even if I no longer live in the US. And if I want to get rid of this beacon of freedom, my US citizenship, I have to pay an "exit tax" on my assets. Freedom my ass.
ulfw 13y ago
Freedom? A democracy with only two electable parties? The world's highest incarceration rate bar none. The world's highest military spending. Huge prevalence of guns. etc etc Listen, the US is a wonderful country for many many reasons. But we should get off the high horse of 'freedom'. Highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q49NOyJ8fNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q49NOyJ8fNA

jerf 13y ago

I'd observe that if that is literally true, if neither would trade for the other's economic position, the question of which is better off is undefined, for any definition of "better off" that properly takes the subjective nature of value into account. And that's not just a statistical sort of truth... it's actually profoundly true, something that touches deeply on the question of "affluence" and what wealth really is.

arethuza 13y ago
One small thing perhaps worth noting on the subjective side of things is that France has the most foreign visitors of any country, now of course this is offset by the fact that the US is relatively remote, but France as a country has a hell of a lot of things going for it even if it is a bit messed up economically.
threatofrain 13y ago
I'd say that the higher $ man who lives in the city in a compact space with a compact car is more well off than the man living in an inland state with lots of acres and a hunting cabin. Why? Because the man in the city can purchase that anytime he wants. Just like you can go take your money to China right now and teach English as a side thing. So that subjective value can still be wrapped around an objectively lookable thing; it's just that the city man is not indulging in that lifestyle yet -- or perhaps he wishes to take that wealth elsewhere.

noblethrasher 13y ago

Not that it matters any more, but Oklahoma has two good world-class universities (and many smaller ones), and, about 10 years ago, subsidized education to the tune of about 66%: full time tuition (12 hrs) and fees was about $1500/semester Even now, the junior college-to-university route is still pretty affordable. Things are somewhat bad now —and getting worse— but it's a relatively new condition.

Raphael 13y ago
The catch is that those students have to live in Oklahoma.

mar164 13y ago

Not true. In 2011, the ratio of French emigrants into the U.S. to Americans emigrants into France was ~1.7. Adjusting for population implies that the likelihood that a French person would emigrate to the U.S. is much larger than the likelihood that an American would move to France.

ulfw 13y ago
Yea and what's the ratio of French people speaking English vs Americans speaking anything but English (let alone French!)?